Automating Finance Proposals for PCF Bank

Finance houses can spend considerable time and effort dealing with the administration of new proposals. When PCF Bank (then the Private & Commercial Finance Group) decided to automate some of its new business processes, it opted for expert help and advice from Technonerds, a specialist consultancy based in Milton Keynes.

As an independent finance house, PCF Bank provided a wide range of high-quality financial products to consumers and businesses. Founded in 1994, the group's shares are quoted on the AIM market, part of the London Stock Exchange. Its Business Finance Division offered lease and hire purchase finance packages, processing a substantial number of proposals each month — originally using a fax and paper-based system.

Robert Murray, Managing Director, explains:

"We started looking for a software house that could help us develop a web-based proposals system for our Consumer Motor Finance Division. Technonerds stepped into the breach and worked closely with us to produce an application that would automate various decisions and the agreement workflow. This enabled us to reduce turnaround times and provided the support we needed for our future growth plans."

In May 2009, the Business Finance division found its Access-based proposals management system increasingly outdated, and Technonerds was selected to develop a replacement web-based system. We wrote the origination system and devised the interface with PCF Bank's contract management system. The new system, eQuote, went live in June 2009 and greatly reduced the time taken to transfer information to the contract management system.

eQuote incorporates a unique authorisation document that enables PCF Bank to underwrite a proposal and send it through the authorisation process — previously a paper-intensive, lengthy procedure that has now been considerably streamlined.

"The benefits of working with Technonerds include their willingness to acquire a deep understanding of our business, and to create the new system to replicate our manual processes rather than just tailoring an off-the-shelf system."

eQuote delivered better management information and automated PCF Bank's underwriting decisions, with an autoload function that transfers data automatically to contract administration and accounting systems.

"Ultimately, it enables us to offer a faster, more effective and more user-friendly service to our brokers. It also allows us to boost our business volumes without an incremental increase in personnel — we can do more business with the same number of people. I don't really know how we survived without it!" — Robert Murray, Managing Director, PCF Bank

Technonerds has continued to enhance the system, which now handles over 30,000 proposals per month.